College football Week 1 shatters viewership record across all networks
By Jake Faigus
Published:
Week 1 of the 2025 college football season is over, and it generated some of the most significant buzz around college football’s first week ever. There were massive expectations, highlighted by three top-10 matchups. It also lived up to the hype from a viewership perspective, with the number of minutes viewed well surpassing the previous record of 14.5 billion.
Monday’s game between North Carolina and TCU has not been calculated yet, but the expectation is that the total viewing of Week 1 will surpass 20 billion minutes once those ratings are in.
Two of the 3 best games involved the SEC, with massive ratings for Texas-Ohio State and LSU-Clemson. Texas-Ohio State averaged more than 16.6 million viewers, becoming the most-watched Week 1 college football game ever. It also peaked at 18.6 million. The top 5 clash was also the third most-watched football game FOX has ever had, behind only Ohio State-Michigan in 2022 and 2023.
LSU-Clemson averaged 9.79 million in Saturday’s primetime window. Then, on Sunday night, with no other games to compete with, Notre Dame-Miami averaged 10 million. The day was littered with massive games, despite the busy slate.
Texas lost the first game against Ohio State in a sloppy, yet close match. Then, LSU took control in the second half against Clemson, and the conference finished 1-1 in those 2 huge games.
Auburn beat Baylor in primetime on Friday night, Tennessee blew out Syracuse on Saturday, Alabama was shocked by Florida State, and South Carolina pulled away late from Virginia Tech.
One other viewership aspect to keep track of that proved how much excitement was involved in this weekend was the fact that ESPN’s episode of College GameDay had the highest viewership it’s ever had, with an average of 3.5 million viewers and a peak of 5 million when they reached the picks segment at the end of the show.
